Comics

Pet

The cover of Misty issue 6.

Appy61

Just spotted this on twatter for those interested.

Read 15,000 Marvel Comics Online for 99 Cents (for a Limited Time)

Pet

I wonder who would have time to read 15,000 comics. I suspect that it might be more than I've read in my 68 years. (Not that I've kept a count... but I must have averaged less than a comic a day... well, at a bit less than one a day [if my mental arithmetic is right] 15,000 would take 50 years [or so] to read.)

Pet

When I was kid, come to think of it, I usually read one comic a week.

Pet

Here's a blog post I wrote:

http://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/draw-misty-for-me-british-library-sunday-17-august-2014/

Pet

Here's a rare item currently on Ebay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Desperate-Dan-ORIGINAL-ARTWORK-CHRISTMAS-1946-Dandy-comic-Dudley-Watkins-Beano-/361112443259?pt=UK_Books_comics_Magazines_UK_Comics_ET&hash=item5413fa997b

Pet · Post edited by Pet at 2015-03-25 06:54:16

I'm reviving this thread to talk about books of old comics. (Books of comics, not quite the same thing as comic books.) They seem to me a great way to buy comics of which no sane person could afford to buy the originals, even if that person were able to find them. What is more, the originals would be printed on low grade paper which I (for one) would be afraid to touch lest it disintegrates. These reprints are on new decent quality paper. Better yet most of them have the protection of hard covers.

The particular books I'd like to celebrate are pictured below. All of them are centred on female characters. If you don't share that focus, it's worth remembering that similar books can be bought featuring whatever male characters catch your fancy.

Pet

I'll start with the DC Archive Editions. These are quite expensive. You'll be lucky to find any volume in the series for much less than £25, and they can cost considerably more. But they're nice. They're well made hard covered books weighing in at more than 200 pages. (The Wonder Woman one is 240 pages, the Supergirl 226.) Each volume starts with a brief but worthwhile forward. The main bulk of the books is taken up with reproductions of vintage comics, which is what the buyer pays her or his money for -- and these are lovely. The colours are perfect. It's like looking at the vintage comics when they were fresh off the press. Better, in fact. There are no printing glitches and no trace of the printing on the other side of the page showing through.

Pet

And here is a first look inside one of the DC Archive editions. This is the start of Wonder Woman's very first appearance -- in All Star Comics No 8 (December 1941 - January 1942).

Pet

This is from the middle of the Wonder Woman book -- a couple of pages from Sensation Comics No 8 (August 1942).

Ponygurl

Ahhhh, an island of Amazons..heaven. I have some vintage Wonder Woman postcards. A little off of the subject, but did you ever watch the series with Lynda Carter? I think the new WW film coming soon is supposed to star Gal Gadot..HOT. This is funny-

A_is_A

I would race home from school just to catch re-runs of that show. 8-> Linda Cater was SMOKING hot! I often found myself secretly rooting for the bad guys, just because I loved watching her get into trouble i.e. tied to a chair etc...those were my favorite :\"> Also the episodes where she was back in Olympus with all the other Amazonian girls, which now that I think of it seemed more like Lesbos island than Olympus right :-?
I should have known I was gay then.
I learnt many things from early eighties Linda Carter Wonder Woman, but the most important was, never underestimate girls with glasses.

iuventus

I got a boner every time Steve Trevor got tied up.

Pet

Funnily enough (or not so funnily), I recently bought all three seasons of Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman on DVD. So far, I've only watched the pilot. I have a feeling that the TV series is like a boxed set of luxury chocolates. Eating/watching one is a pleasure, but devouring the whole boxed set too quickly would lead to a psychic tummy ache.

The pilot is oddly faithful, in a lot of respects, to the original 1940s comics. (The word 'pilot' is curiously apt, because it involves several pilots -- Steve Trevor, Wonder Woman herself and a couple of Germans whose names I've already forgotten.) It's set during the Second World War (the comic first hit the newsstands in the same month as Pearl Harbour). Presumably for the benefit of 1970s viewers who were ignorant of the conflict, there's a strange summary of the war that omits all mention of the Soviet Union.

Lynda Carter is smoking hot. The plot has more holes than story, but (in the words of the title song from Busby Berkeley's wonderful musical 'Dames') "who cares if there's a plot or not, when you've got a lot of dames". The storyline owes some unpaid debt to the British 1941 film 'Cottage to Let', which is worth seeing, although it's short on smoking hot dames.

Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman seems to embody an odd version of feminism in which my reaction alternated between "Right on, sister!" and "What the fuck????" (maybe there should be more question marks).

Oh, and as in the 1958 SF movie 'The Crawling Eye' (aka 'The Trollenberg Terror'), there's an aeroplane (the German one, not Wonder Woman's invisible flyer) that changes to a different machine in midair. One doesn't need to be an expert on Second World War aircraft to spot this, an ability to count the engines will suffice. (Not hard counting, either -- really, just the knack of distinguishing between one and two.)

But, to return to 'Dames' -- "who cares if there's a plot or not, when you've got a lot of dames" is as true today as it was in 1934 (pre-Hays Code). And there are a lot of dames on Wonder Woman's home island. The whole thing is weird, sexy (and, yes, Ms A_is_A, your reaction was a good clue to your sexuality) and (as I may have said before) Lynda Carter is smoking hot.

Incidentally, later female superheroes (falling out of their costumes) were largely aimed at a male readership, but both Wonder Woman and Supergirl were mostly targeted at girls. They created these superheroes for the likes of you, Ms A_is_A and Ponygurl, so you should enjoy them.

Ponygurl

Oh, I do ENJOY them Pet...

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